Alternative to media gateway cards for IP to TDM?

[cypher0]

We have a call center in another city that runs entirely on IP sets, and a large number of remote users also on IP sets. Our headquarters office runs on TDM still, and we have a bunch of PRIs that our PBX taps into to get to the outside world. That means that all of our calls to/from IP sets have to be converted in order to get outside or to a TDM...

We may not be able to procure, install, and test enough media cards to support our call center in time for our needs... is there an alternative that would allow us to simply route all VoIP traffic from the call center to a conversion device that gets wired up to the cs 1000, thereby eliminating the need for media cards, at least for the time being? We would need something that would support at least 100 users (simultaneous calls).

I'm thinking of something similar to CITEL / MCK GATEWAY II, only without the need for special devices per phone. Sort of like an external media gateway. Is this even possible, or am I insane for even thinking about this?

Thanks,

-C

 

[allenmac]

I would not say insane, rather, wildly optimistic.

I don't know of anything that would accomplish what you desire.

 

[bad69cat]

I'm pretty sure at the last job I had they had these boxes called PIMG's (SP?) that interfaced on the TDM trunks to get calls out/in the gateway/PBX -- you just build a route in the PBX that points to the PIMG. Maybe it's a CISCO only thing? (they were converting to CISCO IP phones). They were a bit on the flakey side however! Every now and then we would have to trace which trunk was failing and reset that PIMG or you lost a good chunk of your available trunks. It got the job done.